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MOSCOW, Aug 19: Russia is planning a series of multi-billion-dollar oil exploration and technical projects with both Iraq and Kuwait, government officials said in Moscow on Monday.
The cooperation with Baghdad, valued at around 40 billion dollars over the next decade, will produce projects in the oil and gas sector, transport and communications.
A Russian Foreign Ministry source told the Interfax news agency that these would not violate sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Agreements covering about 70 separate projects are expected to be signed in the first half of September, the Iraqi ambassador to Russia, Abbas Khalaf, confirmed. Government officials in Moscow gave assurances that no supply of arms will be involved. But Russia’s decision to deepen ties with its longtime ally further complicate plans for a US military assault on Iraq, already faced with a lack of enthusiasm by foreign leaders.
DEAL WITH KUWAIT: Mean-while, a Russian-Kuwaiti joint cooperation commission met for the first time in Moscow Monday to discuss major projects in oil exploration and other military, scientific and technical areas.
Russian Energy Minister Igor Yusufov said Russian firms including the Sibneft oil company want to develop four oil deposits in northern Kuwait in an eight-billion-dollar project.
Kuwait’s Information Minister and Acting Oil Minister, Sheikh Ahmed Fahd al-Ahmed al-Sabah, welcomed the prospects of the increased cooperation, which is expected to massively boosting the current annual trade turnover of about 35 million dollars.
“Relations with Moscow have long surpassed the level of simple diplomatic cooperation, and we would like them to be of special nature in future,” the minister said.
DENIAL: A senior Russian foreign ministry spokesman on Monday confirmed that Moscow was close to striking a new economic cooperation pact with Iraq, but denied the deal was worth some 40 billion dollars.
“As to reports that this deal is worth between 40 and 60 billion dollars, this agreement does not specify any figures — it is a framework agreement,” foreign ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov said in a statement.
Malakhov stressed that the agreement did not break any international conventions and covered a span of cooperation stretching over 10 years, and not five as mentioned by Iraqi officials.
He further made no mention of claims from the Iraq ambassador in Moscow — who himself disclosed the 40-billion-dollar figure — that the deal would be sealed in Baghdad in September.
He added that talks on the project began more than one year ago.—AFP
